


Being Neighborly

by reeby10



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Canon Character of Color, First Kiss, First Meetings, Kissing, M/M, Meet-Cute, Partial Nudity, cliche as fuck ngl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-28
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-27 05:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7606345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reeby10/pseuds/reeby10
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Excuse me,” he said, stepping out of the doorway and leaving it very purposefully half opened. “Do you live there? Did you get locked out or something?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Being Neighborly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paperclipbitch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperclipbitch/gifts).



Fitz was enjoying a rare day off work, tinkering with a personal project, when he heard low cursing from out in the hallway. Interspersed with the sound was a dull thunking that could have been anything from someone banging on the door to a monster thundering through one of the nearby apartments.

The building was usually pretty quiet, enough that Fitz had never even met any of his neighbors on his floor, so the sounds were very out of place. He thought for a moment about just calling the super and letting it go, but after a few minutes he decided to go check it out himself. It probably wasn’t some monster that was going to eat him. Or a murder that was going to kill him.

When he cracked the door open just enough to see outside, he caught a glance of someone standing in front of his neighbor’s door. The man was tall and dark skinned, dressed in workout gear, and he was muttering to himself. Fitz caught something about a key and he assumed the man was his neighbor who had locked his key inside.

Well, here was his chance to be neighborly. He just hoped his neighbor didn’t mind meeting him for the first time in his pajamas.

“Excuse me,” he said, stepping out of the doorway and leaving it very purposefully half opened. “Do you live there? Did you get locked out or something?”

The man turned to look at him, and Fitz’s breath caught in the back of his throat. He could tell before that the man was very muscular, but he also turned out to be smoking hot. It was so distracting that it took him a moment for Fitz to realize he’d missed the beginning of what the man was saying.

“-and of course I’d lock them inside when I went out for a run,” the man was saying as Fitz tuned back in, a wry grin on his unfairly attractive face. “At least I’m off work today until the afternoon, so it’s not too big of a deal. Oh, I’m Mack by the way. I don’t think we’ve met before.”

“Fitz. It’s uh, nice to meet you,” Fitz replied, then winced a little. “I mean, not like this. It would have been nice to meet you, you know, when you weren’t locked out of your apartment.”

Mack didn’t seem to take offense, just smiling easily at the way Fitz stumbled over his words. He nodded, then eyed Fitz in a way that made his body go a little hot. “Yeah, but at least we’ve met now, right?”

“Do you want to go to my apartment?”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Fitz clenched his teeth together with sudden nerves, but he didn’t take it back. It was too late for that now, and he also wasn’t entirely sure he’d want to. He wasn’t generally so overly friendly with people he’d just met, but he would decide later to blame that look and just Mack’s general hotness for making him lose his inhibitions for a moment.

“I called a friend to bring over my spare key, but it’ll be awhile before they can get here,” Mack said with something like regret tinging his voice, then looked down at his sweat-soaked clothing. “And I stink pretty bad. I don’t want to ruin your couch or something.”

Fitz tried to keep from staring at the way Mack’s muscles stood out under the damp, clinging fabric. “That’s uh, no problem,” he managed to get out, almost distracted from the conversation all over again. “You can borrow my shower. Maybe your friend will be here by then?”

The smile Mack sent his way at that had him feeling a little faint. God, his neighbor was attractive. How had he never noticed him before?

“Thanks,” Mack said. “That means a lot.”

Trying not to stumble over himself as his mind filled with images of Mack, naked in his shower, Fitz showed the other man where the linens were and how to turn on the water. In just a few minutes, he was back standing in the middle of his living room, the sound of running water in the background.

He was kind of at a loss for what to do now, too distracted to get back to the work he’d been doing earlier. Eventually he decided on watching some tv, at least to have something mindless to lose himself in instead of continuing to imagine how Mack looked right then. Even watching reruns of Dog Cops had to be better than popping a very inappropriate boner over his unfairly hot neighbor who he’d only just met.

The water from the shower cut off and he muted the tv, turning just in time to see Mack emerge from the bathroom. For a moment all he could do was stare, all the blood rushing to his face… and quite a bit lower too. Mack was standing there with nothing but an almost too small towel wrapped around his waist, beads of water still trailing down his naked chest.

“I… uh, I mean, you… what?”

Mack smiled, taking a few steps forward until he was in the living room proper. “I didn’t want to put my sweaty clothes back on,” he said, eyes dropping to Fitz’s lap before rising back to his face. He smiled, though there was something a little tentative at the corners. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not- not at all,” Fitz breathed out, eyes widening. If he wasn’t very much mistaken, he thought Mack was flirting with him. That was almost beyond his imagination, despite what he’d been thinking about when Mack first got in the shower.

“Good.” Before Fitz even knew what was happening, Mack had closed the distance between them, huge hands coming up to gently cup Fitz’s face as he leaned down and pressed their lips together.

Without even thinking about it, Fitz leaned into the kiss, hands moving to touch Mack’s chest like he’d wanted to do since the moment he saw him. He could feel Mack’s pleased rumble through his hands and arms and shivered a little. Everything was warm and a little damp and almost too much too fast but somehow exactly what Fitz wanted.

He wasn’t sure how long they kissed, their mouths moving together more than enough to distract him from anything else. It could have been minutes or hours, but all he knew was that he didn’t want to stop. Distantly, he thought he heard knocking, or maybe someone shouting, from the hallway, but even that barely registered.

Eventually they broke apart, breathing heavily. Fitz felt dazed as Mack smiled, leaning forward to leave a soft kiss on the tip of his nose before pulling away again.

“That’s my friend with the key,” Mack said, and Fitz felt a rush of disappointment pierce through the fog of kissing at the thought that this meant Mack would go back to his apartment and they might never do this again. “I was thinking I’d get my key and some clothes and we could continue this. Maybe even take my clothes back off again if you want.”

For a moment, Fitz was too surprised to react, then he nodded almost frantically. Mack let out a deep, rich chuckle at the show of enthusiasm. “Alright then, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Right then, even a minute seemed like too long for Mack to be gone, but Fitz would deal. It looked like he had a lot better things coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Concrit welcome. If you like my fic, feel free to come hit me up [on tumblr](http://voldiebuns.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
